Blog - Payments Corner

Today's post is a guest blog by Charles Allen, the COO and CoFounder of Movanta.

Facewatch is the only national online crime reporting and image sharing system and it’s revolutionising the way that crime is reported to the police.

For decades technology has been used in different ways to try and make the customer “stick” to a particular brand. Loyalty schemes, promotions and price promises have also been used to try to gain that must sought after advantage. But today’s consumer is after much more than a simple cost saving, they want to save their personal valuable time.

EMVCo has announced that over 42 per cent of all payment cards and nearly 76 per cent of terminals in circulation globally are based on its technology. There is no doubt that EM V technology adoption has been successful in the UK and other parts of Europe, but – perhaps rather surprisingly – the US is lagging behind.

Showrooming is the practice of examining merchandise in store without purchasing it, but then shopping online to find a better price.

We’re all familiar with the idea of dropping our change into the charity box sitting on the shop counter. The electronic charity box is exactly the same idea but it works instead when we pay by card in store, online and via mobile.

A distinct air of excitement has been building in the Servebase Sales and Marketing department this week. The final preparations for our involvement at RBTE (Retail Business Technology Exhibition) are taking shape nicely and everyone is looking forward to being part of what promises to be an exciting event.

The card payment industry faces an ever increasing threat of data theft. To date, criminals have stolen millions of customer card records and in an attempt to raise the baseline security practices of online merchants and payment processing firms, card payment companies joined forces to create the Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS).

Over the last twenty years, the way in which consumers interact with brands has changed beyond recognition. It used to be that a customer would walk into a store, pick something off the shelf, pay for it and leave through the front door. Now, with multi-channel business, it’s a totally different story.

Despite the view that North America is one of the most progressive regions in the world, both technologically and in general, there is a remarkable lack of EMV technology in place in US stores.